Catalogue of the Dead
by RainyMittens
Summary: Dozens of stories lie untold in the halls of Heavenly Host...the stories of the unfortunate many who lost their lives there, with nothing but bleached bones and school nametags to show that they once existed. These are the tales that are lost between closed spaces, of the terrors and tragedies that befell everyone who failed to escape. (Nametag list oneshots, mostly)
1. Self

1. Self

After school today I was planning on committing suicide. I bought sleeping pills and everything. It's not like anyone would care. Nobody likes me. I'm no good at anything. Not even my parents give a shit what happens to me. But if I died...well, that would show them, wouldn't it?

I was going to go home right away after I cleaned out my locker...hmph, nobody even stopped to ask me what I was doing. Then, on my way out, Megumi caught up to me. I had known her since we were kids. She was incredibly kind and talented, not to mention cute. She already had like a million friends, so I don't know why she wanted me around. But she grabbed my arm and dragged me along, saying that Nishamaya had a "super cool charm!" that she wanted me to join in on.

That's why I'm here now. And I just realized something: I don't want to die.

I mean, at first I was just kind of freaked out. Who wouldn't be? I had no idea how I got to this place. It was freezing cold and creepy as hell and I couldn't find Megumi or any of her friends. For a while I stumbled around, trying to get my bearings in the dark corridors, but I couldn't make heads nor tails of what was going on.

That was when I saw the corpse. My body seized up so much I thought I was going to go into convulsions, or piss myself from fright. Its hands were clawing at the floor in eternal desperation, one of its legs totally smashed beneath the knee, skin slowly rotting away. It was unbearably hideous. Was this what it looked like when somebody died? I never want to look like that. Death stared me in the face with its overpowering ugliness, and I finally understood that this is what it meant to die.

Since then, I've seen so many corpses. I wish I could get rid of them all. I wish they would stop staring at me. Those dead eyes. If they're dead, why won't they stop _looking_ at me?!

I couldn't find Megumi anywhere. The floor was broken in strange places and I couldn't open most of the doors. Some posters and notes I found say that I'm in some place called Heavenly Host Elementary School. I've never even heard of it. Heavenly? More like hell.

Was I in hell? Did this happen because I was going to kill myself? I won't do it. I'll throw away the pills, I'll live to be a hundred! I don't want to die in here. Let me out!

No matter how much I shouted and pleaded, tore at the windows and kicked at the doors, nobody answered me. There wasn't anybody there except for dozens and dozens of dead bodies. Those sons of bitches. I hate them. I won't end up like them! I won't! They want my life, I can see it, I can tell. But they can't have it! It's mine.

I'll kill them. Even if they're already dead. I'll rip out their eyes and throw them down holes in the floor so they can't look at me anymore. That'll show them. Stupid corpses. I won't end up like them.

I found a pair of scissors on a shelf in the infirmary. It's good for taking eyes out. Sometimes ghosts float around the bodies, mumbling nonsense or moaning "It hurts" over and over and over. It's creepy. They should shut up and go away. Bastards. Some of the bodies had their tongues cut out. Good plan! I'm doing it too now. They're so squishy. The scissors make a nice "snik snik" sound when I'm cutting them out.

There was an earthquake a while ago. I thought this place was going to come apart at the seams. Sure enough, the floor behind me gave out, but as I went forward I realized that a new hallway had opened up. It made absolutely no sense, but it's not like anything else in this damn place did, so I took the door at the end. It led outside! Fucking finally, I thought. Unfortunately, it was raining like crazy, and as far as the eye could see the building was surrounded by a dark forest. There was pretty much no way I was venturing into anywhere that ominous, at least by myself.

Speaking of being by myself, I found one of Megumi's friends inside-I could tell she was from our school by the uniform. She was sitting in a chair, head tipped back and arms hanging down by her sides, wrists chafed, forearms covered in bruises. The lower half of her face was completely smashed in, teeth jutting out of the mess of bone, gums, and cartilage, cheeks torn and jaws utterly destroyed. So they were all here too, I thought, trying to stop a scream from clawing out of my chest. Most of the bodies I had seen so far looked to have been here for quite some time, but this...? She had been alive just _hours _ago. Suddenly the darkness was a whole lot darker and the silences were so much more disquieting. Somebody was in here, _right now_, killing people.

More than ever before, I wanted out.

I stood there for a few minutes, whipping my head around to every creak and gust of air, heart pounding and mind racing. Finally my eyes settled back on the corpse in front of me-eyes unnaturally wide in death, boring into me as if accusing me of her demise. My hand tightened on the blood-stained scissors.

"You think this is my fault?" I hissed at her. Of course, she didn't respond. She just stared. All of them would blame me, I thought. I couldn't even fathom my desire to end my own life anymore, but that must have been what brought us here. No...no! Something like this...it couldn't be my fault!

She was still staring. Damn her! It was her own fault for dying like that. I wouldn't be held responsible! But she wouldn't stop _staring_. Her eyeballs were so slippery when I dug them out. I threw them down a crack in the floor, and spat at her body as I walked away.

It wasn't my fault she died. It wasn't, _it wasn't_!

I couldn't find anything in the second wing. More doors that wouldn't open, more windows yawning blackness. More bodies, with their infernal eyes. There was even a room where the piano played itself, stumbling through the same song over and over, stopping abruptly when I came too close. The atmosphere in the whole place was making my head pound, and I had found absolutely nothing useful there, so in the end I headed back to the main building. But when I got there...something seemed to have changed. There were different cracks in the floor, new flyers stuck to the walls. There was a different feeling in the air. This time, as I stepped carefully down the main hallway, the main entranceway came into view-and the floor was whole. The main door! I thought. Even though I knew that there was nothing but dense forest all around, I still felt compelled to check the front entrance.

Between the looming wooden shelves, tiny shoes were scattered all over the floor as an unsettling reminder to the history of the building. There was a skeleton rotting away in the corner, eyes long disintegrated along with the rest of its skin. How pitiful, I thought. I made my way to the door and reached out to rattle it experimentally. It didn't budge. Naturally.

I swore and punched the door as hard as I could, which turned out to be a pretty stupid idea because all I got out of it was an injured hand. Praying that my shout hadn't attracted any unwanted attention, turned to glance around me nervously. And then, from the doorway, a tentative voice:

"Tsutaya?"

Damn! I raised my scissors reflexively, breathing rising with panic. It was too dark to see the figure's face from where I stood, but they soon crept closer, the dim light from outside revealing a pale, frightened face. It was Megumi.

The relief on her face was probably about as strong as the surprise on mine. She rushed at me, throwing her arms around me and sobbing into my shirt.

"Tsutaya! Tsutaya...I'm so glad you're okay!"

"Oh...yeah, I was wondering where you were," I managed.

She sniffled some more. "Yuuki is...Yuuki-" she cut herself off with a low keening wail, burying her face in my shoulder. Another one dead? Ugh, I hated to think of what kind of face she was making. My hand tightened on the scissors.

I waited for Megumi to stop sobbing at me. It took a while, but eventually they dried into hiccups and she detached herself from me. She looked me over, wiping her eyes on her sleeves.

"S-so, Tsutaya...where have you been? We were...I-I was...looking all over for you."

"Huh? Well, we were probably in different spaces. I think I switched over a minute ago, actually..."

At my mention of "different spaces" Megumi's face twisted up like she was going to start crying again. "I hate this place! It doesn't make any sense. How is any of this even possible? Why is this happening to us...?"

..._Why_?

Was she going to blame me too?

She must have seen me stiffen up. "Tsutaya? I'm sorry...are you all right?"

Now that she mentioned it, I was feeling kind of strange...as if I were floating slightly. "No, I'm fine," I told her. I had probably just been in here too long, that was all. "I've been looking for a way out. Have you found anything?"

Megumi looked slightly dazed. She probably had had other things on her mind, or more likely, on her trail. "A..way out? Oh...no, we didn't find anything. All the windows and doors are shut, and I couldn't even see outside." Her lips were trembling. "God, why are we even here?!"

There she went with the "why" again.

She went on, "we did the charm right, didn't we? This shouldn't have happened! We were supposed to be friends forever...Yuuki..."

I couldn't stop my next words. They slid out, cold and crushing as a glacier. "So what you're saying is, it's somebody's fault, right?"

Megumi looked confused. "What? I don't..."

"It wasn't my fault."

"N-no, Tsutaya, I never said-"

"It isn't my fault if you all die in here!"

Megumi was backing away, holding her hands out as if to ward me off. "Tsutaya, you're scaring me..." she said. She noticed suddenly what was in my hand, and her voice rose in panic. "Why do you have those scissors?!"

I glanced down at them. "They come in handy."

She was shaking so violently she looked as if she was going to fall down. She was so scared of me...ha. She really did blame me after all.

I wouldn't stand for it. Especially not those eyes. No, they had to go.

I stepped forward, scissors poised. Megumi ran.

She dashed into the hallway, screaming, making for the stairway towards the left. I gave chase but was forced to stop abruptly when the building lurched. An earthquake? What terrible timing! I ducked down to ride it out. Boards creaked and snapped, walls shuddered, and lights flickered sporadically until the shaking stopped and the building settled back with a deep groan. I stood up and looked around.

The hallway that Megumi had run down now sported a gap far too wide for me to jump. Damn! I couldn't let her get away. I headed back the opposite way, intent on taking the other staircase. But when I reached the fork in the hall-

"Whannah prahy wif me?"

I turned. Standing on the other side of a large gap in the floor was a little boy. Or rather, the ghost of a little boy. He glowed faintly with a soft blue light, staring at me with a look of detached interest that chilled me to the bone. Instantly, my body felt as if it were made of lead. With an effort, I raised my scissors in front of me, gripping them with both hands.

"Leave...me...alone," I ground out, trying not to stammer in fear. These damn ghosts...I wouldn't let them kill me! I couldn't!

The scissors seemed to provoke some kind of reaction from the boy. His eyes narrowed almost petulantly.

"Ah dohn lihk 'uo," he said. Tongueless. Served him right, little bastard.

My legs were totally numb to my control. I felt them take a step forward, towards the hole. No!

"Let me go!" I cried, voice shrill with panic.

The boy just stood silently, watching with a fascination utterly devoid of sympathy-the expression of a child watching an ant drown. I took another step.

"No! Stop it! I can't die here! _Stop it!_"

His face didn't change even the slightest bit. Five more steps...four...three.

I was getting increasingly desperate. "You little _brat_," I spat. "I'll kill you. Even if you're already dead!" Two steps. One. "STOP, DAMN YOU!"

I did stop then, reeling like a puppet as my foot slammed down halfway through a step. I still couldn't move my legs, but I was so dizzy with relief that I didn't care. I looked up at the boy, my mouth opening in preparation to tell him off, but...

He was smiling. It was a perfectly innocent expression, but nothing had ever scared me so much in my entire life. "Bye bye!" He said blithely, raising his hand to wave at me. I stepped forward. _Crik-crack_, went the floorboards. I screamed.

And fell.

* * *

Tsutaya Azuma, St Maryanne University High School

Age: 17

Drowned in pool of decomposing corpses. (Chapter 5)

Also mentioned:

Megumi Sugii, age 17.

Starved to death after desperate search for friend.

Yuuki Nishimaya, age 17.

Buried alive by spirit of little boy; suffocated.

* * *

Author's notes:

Wow, this one kind of got away from me. I started off with the concept "was going to commit suicide but changed mind", writing from my own experiences. Originally I wrote it as if it was a boy, but realized that Tsutaya is probably a girl and changed tack. The language is still technically ambiguous though! As an added note, the chapter title is actually referring to Tsutaya's selfish attitude.

Also I wasn't expecting them to go quite that crazy, but these things just happen sometimes.

Anyways, if you read this I would dearly love to hear anything you have to say about it! It would definitely make me want to write more, haha. But yeah, thanks.


	2. Footsteps

2. Footsteps

This shouldn't have been happening. How could it be happening? Places like this just didn't exist, right?

It was nine o'clock. My favorite TV show was on. I missed it the week before, and I had to look it up online.

I wanted to know what happens next. I wanted to go home and sit down on the couch with a blanket and turn on the television.

But I didn't even know how I got here. I didn't know where I was. I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to die...

I think

he's coming

back.

No, no, no...

I didn't know it was possible to be this scared. I was so scared, I couldn't even move. I thought when people were scared they ran around and screamed and stuff. But I was frozen. I couldn't do anything. If he came back-

Please no, please don't-

I didn't know. I didn't! I didn't want to think about it!

I couldn't die like this...

I hadn't done anything wrong! Why was this happening to me?!

I

can

hear

footsteps.

I used to play horror video games all the time. For fun. I thought, if I were in that situation I would know what to do; that if I were there, I could find my way out. There's always a way!

But as it turns out, I couldn't do anything. They always give you a weapon in those games. They always point you towards the exit.

There's no way out of here. The doors don't work. The windows are sealed. There's nothing to fight back with. And everywhere, everywhere, there are corpses. They're all my age! People like me...just like me. I don't want to die, oh please, God...

There were notes everywhere from the dead. They said there's no way out, even the people who were here for weeks. Posters, flyers, notices everywhere about something that happened decades years ago. I didn't know about any of that! I had nothing to do with it! Please, I just wanted to go home!

The footsteps

are getting

louder.

I had found the body of one of my friends a while ago. His whole head was gone...I could only tell it was him by his nametag and uniform. Even though I had seen a bunch of corpses already, I couldn't help but think, "so this is what a dead body looks like". I threw up everything in my stomach.

I was so hungry...this morning I decided not to bring lunch. I looked in the fridge and didn't feel like having another sandwich today. I would even have eat wasabi at this point. I was thirsty too. I never knew how much being thirsty could hurt-my throat was so dry it felt like it was going to crack like dried mud. It's just...there was nothing here. No water, no food, no light, no phones, no safe places. There's no one to turn to, no where to go. And there's nothing you can do about it.

I think

they're right

outside

the door...

I felt like I was being suffocated by panic. Have you ever had that feeling, like when you're doing something you're not supposed to and might get caught? That panicking indecision when your mind flits from option to option, wondering if you should have done something different, if you messed up somewhere?

It was like that, except ten times worse. I wasn't not skipping school or sneaking into my room late. Something was _hunting _me.

The footsteps stopped.

A child giggled.

I wanted to run. My heart was pounding and I was shaking all over and I wanted to flee as fast as my legs could take me, because anything was more bearable than sitting here helplessly and just _listening_. But at the same time I was frozen to the spot, body locked in place under the teacher's desk, because it was infinitely worse to be out in the open. To stay and hide, or take my chances running. Which one was the right thing to do?!

The door slid open

very

slow-

ly...

Small feet padded on the rough wood floor. Small feet? But hadn't it been the big man following me...?

I didn't dare look. I just shrunk further back into my hiding spot. Please go away, please please please-

"Is someone in here?" Called a voice. It sounded like a little girl. She said it in a singsong voice, with a note of sarcasm that sounded chillingly out of place in the voice of a child. I went numb all over, except for the nausea churning in my stomach.

She giggled again. It was the most terrifying sound I had ever heard. No child should have a laugh like that.

"Come on, come on! Don't you want to play?" She taunted. I could hear her footsteps as she walked around the classroom. She knew I was here. There wasn't any room in my head for thoughts anymore, just nameless, all-consuming dread.

The footsteps stopped. Then there was another giggle, close by.

"I can see you..."

Suddenly, she stepped around the desk. I came face to face with the monster-child, staring down at me with a terrible grin stretched across her tiny face and blood-stained scissors in her hand. Her black hair hung over her eyes, flickering crazily with pleasure.

I ran. I shot straight past her and through the open classroom door, so scared I was incapable of even screaming. So scared that I forgot about what I had been hiding from in the first place: _heavy _footsteps.

From behind came an inhuman roar and the sound of feet pounding a sickeningly offbeat rhythm in pursuit. I found myself sobbing as I pushed my tortured body to its limit, hunger and thirst forgotten in my need to escape.

And then the floor just...ended. There wasn't anywhere else to run. I tried a door nearby in desperation, but it was like it was part of the wall. I was still clawing at the door, pounding at it when he caught up, and I turned to plead, to beg, to cry, but all he did was let out that ghastly wail and raise his hammer.

It wasn't supposed to end like this...

This never should have happened...

But I died anyways. Here, in this place. I still hate it here. I want to go home. And it never stops hurting. If only someone could make it out...if only someone could save our souls...

All I can do is warn the living. So I will.

* * *

Author's notes:

Man, I really love this game. I like how it gives you tidbits of information and lets you fill in the blanks with all the bodies lying around. Naturally, that's what inspired me to write this. I've been writing ones mostly based off nametag information or ghosts you encounter in-game, but this one is nobody in particular.

As an aside, this guy gets dragged underground to the torture room and winds up in a bucket. Them's the breaks at Heavenly Host! But later on he becomes one of the friendly ghosts you encounter in the game.

If you want to take time out of your way to review, I'd greatly appreciate it :)


	3. Piano

3. Piano

Even in death, he played the piano. There was nothing else to do, and it hurt, _it hurt._ It always, always hurt. Too much to move, too much to think. So he played.

Another ghost had laughed and jeered that his head was like a watermelon, split wide open; his body ripped apart as if feasted on by carrion. No one must see such an ugly thing, he thought. It disgusted him, his unglamourous death-slow, violent, and excruciating.

No one must see it. He would not allow it. He became invisible.

Sometimes the living wandered into his piano room, perhaps to investigate, or to hide-some with pale, frightened faces and cautious steps, some with expressions hardened by determination (ahh, so soon to fade), some tearful, some desperate. Some screaming.

He wished they would be quiet. Be quiet and die. Go away, leave him alone, don't look.

He was missing some fingers, and his legs. They hurt too. Missing fingers meant missed keys, but it didn't matter, didn't matter, as long as he kept playing. Here and there a jump and stutter of music as it pierced the soupy silence of the school, a melody leaping across closed spaces, though not to the comfort of those trapped inside.

They could hear, but they must not see. No one must see what a disgraceful death he had suffered. Instead they would hear his music, because music was the one beauty even this place could not destroy.

* * *

So close yet so far, in the land of the living, in the halls of a school built on top of a nightmare...late at night, an organ could be heard playing, with no one in sight.

* * *

Tomoyuki Hamada, Seisei Academy for Girls

Age: 23

"Head of the music department at the Academy. Constantly fantasized about by students."

Legs amputated; died of blood loss.

* * *

Author's note: The piano in Heavenly Host's music room is one of my favorite things in the game. I get that music stuck in my head all the time. Since they never explained it, I could only assume that it was this guy, who is the only person I could think of who might be playing the damn thing. They also never explained (to my knowledge, at least) what was up with the organ music, which seems to be the first sign that shit is about to go down in Kisaragi Academy (see Corpse Party chapter 1 opening, Corpse Party PC 98 version, Book of Shadows chapter 3: Encounter). And we know that the Academy was built on top of Heavenly Host, so why not?

Fun facts: At first I remembered his "cause of death" wrong-I thought that it was a blow to the head. Too lazy to re-write it, I decided instead that he was turbo-mauled my Yoshikazu, kind of like (spoilers?) Nana in Book of Shadows. Ah, I can't believe that my notes are making up like half the word count here...

As always, I implore you to let me know what you think. It'll only take a sec, c'mon. Just do this one thing for me :3

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed already!


	4. Rain

Why didn't Yuma come with me?!

We searched for a way out for hours - all those damn windows and doors that wouldn't open - so when we finally got onto that walkway to the other building, I almost fell down from relief. I mean, I didn't think that could even happen to people, but I actually had to grab onto the railing to hold myself up.

Yuma was scared. She said the forest all around us gave her a bad feeling, not to mention the pouring rain. She wanted to go back inside to search for a different way out.

Was she crazy? I wasn't going back in there. No power on earth could have persuaded me to step foot inside that hellhole of a school ever again. In there, where the ghosts can watch your every move? Where you never know what's waiting to kill you around every dark corner? I didn't care that the woods looked like they went on forever. Anything was better than the claustrophobic paranoia of the hallways.

In the end, we split up. Yuma wouldn't come with me, and we got into a big fight. Finally I said that once I got to the other side of the woods I would send some help, and she said that she'd do the same if she made it out through the school somehow. Both of us just stood there for a moment on the walkway, waiting for each other to change their mind...but neither of us did. I wasn't backing down. I could feel eyes on my back as I hopped over the rail, and I really, really hoped it was just Yuma watching me go. Above the sound of the rain, there was the sound of a child's giggle...

I desperately wanted to get the hell out of there, so I ran as far as I could. The school vanished into the mist behind me and it became harder and harder to tell which way I should be going. Finally I stopped, completely out of breath, and took a look around.

Everything looked the same. Not just the fact that there were trees in all directions, but that literally every tree had the exact same apperance, like someone had copy-pasted a whole forest. "Closed spaces", a ghost inside the school had told us. Even outside, was I in a closed space...? Was there even such a thing as being "outside" here? I suddenly felt as if I were trapped in a room that kept turning beneath my feet - that no matter far I went I would never make any progress.

The trees loomed, the rain fell. My shoulders and the top of my head were starting to itch from dampness. I still had my bookbag with me, so I held it over my head like an umbrella.

There was nothing to do but keep walking. I really wished that Yuma was here. The sameness of everything was starting to make me go insane.

After walking for another two hours or so, I was panicking completely. I was lost, I was scared, and I wanted more than anything to see something other than the same damn trees over and over. Even that damned school! I wished I had stayed with Yuma!

Everywhere it was wet my body itched like crazy, and my fear and frustration boiled over as I swung my bookbag at the closest tree. Surprisingly, a large chunk of bark broke off.

And underneath, there was...

A human face.

I cried out and staggered back, falling to the ground. The face stayed still; expressionless, eyes closed. But it was a face. The face of a girl, around my age.

I got up and ran without even caring about the direction-I just wanted to _get the hell away. _But I had been running for less than half a minute before it appeared again, right in front of me. Sobbing, I pulled a hard right, and there it was again, and again and again for as long as I kept running, no matter which way I went. I couldn't take it anymore-I collapsed onto the ground, curled up in a ball.

That was when I noticed it. I was pretty throughly drenched at this point, and wherever my clothes were soaked through, the "itch" was more like a "burn". It was like a sunburnt sting from a horsefly, except all over, and it made me want to scratch my skin until it bled. But instead, very slowly, I turned my face up to the sky. Raindrops splashed onto my cheeks and slid down like tears. They burned my bare skin.

_Acid rain. _

I screamed. I wanted to get it _off _me, to get out of the rain _right now_. I stumbled to my feet and took off again with even more desperation than before, feet pounding the ground, looking for any kind of shelter. Where was the school? Where the hell did it go? Why wouldn't it come back?!

The trees still looked the same. The rain fell steadily at the same pace as ever. It was like a film that kept looping a clip over and over again, except _I was in it._ And slowly, the rain was getting more and more corrosive. Acid was dripping from the sky, all over my skin, seeping through my clothes and pinning the soaked cloth to me. It hurt so much, but I was too scared to take my clothes off because then there would be nothing at all to protect me from the rain. The trees didn't help. There were no leaves. The school wasn't there. It had vanished completely.

I was so scared I couldn't stop crying and pleading for somebody, anybody, _please, god, just let me out of the rain! _

My skin was burning, blistering, bubbling. I was going out of my mind with pain. I hurled myself screaming at the face in the tree, begging it to open its eyes and fucking _do something, _just to make it end.

Nothing happened.

_Nothing happened._

My eyes were melting.

It hurt _so much. _

Somewhere, a child giggled.

* * *

Tomoe Mizuki, Misato Municipal Brotherhood High (Class 2-4)

Last seen entering woods outside school building; whereabouts unknown.

[death unconfirmed]

Also mentioned:

Yuma Misaki, Misato Municipal Brotherhood High (Class 2-4)

Cause of death: Neck slit from behind.

Age: 17

* * *

Notes: Getting lost in the woods and eventually starving to death is definitely not terrifying enough to be a Heavenly Host death, so I was like, what the hell is so scary out there? It can't be worse than getting caught by the kids, so why doesn't everyone jump ship? Because _acid rain, _that's why! There's another note in the game that mentions somebody getting sick and dying from drinking water (rainwater?), so this turned out to be surprisingly plausible.

Also, much like soylent green, the trees are people.

Anyways, this took me a long time to finish because I kept getting distracted by things and was not in the mood to write somebody getting their face melted off. Sorry.

If you've been reading, please don't be shy to say hi! I will always be delighted to hear from you.


	5. Spite

5. Spite

"I am so sorry - I am so sorry - so very sorry."

I froze. That voice...it came from the doll, didn't it?

"To have killed children so brutally - I was not in my right mind."

I hurled the thing away from me as if it had burned my hand, suddenly rigid with terror. It bounced off a desk and slid off, crumpling on the floor. But it wouldn't shut up. I could hear it weeping from where I stood, and the sound made my skin crawl.

Oh my god. A possessed doll.

I had gotten separated from Mai and Sunoko a while ago, and had absolutely no idea where our other classmates were. I was trying my best to keep myself from panicking, but this place was starting to get to me. We woke up here hours ago (days? It was hard to tell), and there were dead people everywhere, no way out that we could find, and on top of that I got separated from my only companions. So when I found that doll in a classroom, I had been so relieved - it was just something normal. An everyday thing, not covered in blood, harmless and looking like it might have belonged to someone lost here. If I held on to it I could let myself imagine that I might find that person and give it back. It gave me hope.

But then the doll spoke. With the words of a murderer.

It kept sobbing.

I wanted to cover my ears, turn around, and run as far away as possible from that unspeakably awful sound. At the same time...what if it turned out to be useful?

I knew about Heavenly Host, at least a little. I'd heard about it before coming here, not that I had ever thought that anything like this could happen. And the newspaper clippings scattered everywhere in this place...it was definitely the ghosts of the children who had died here that were haunting it. I'd seen their spirits drifting around, horribly mutilated even in death.

I guessed I would be angry too. But I wasn't about to waste time feeling sorry for them, because I'd also seen what they had done to the people here. And what they would do to me.

I really had to get out of here.

The doll finally went quiet, and I forced myself to walk over to pick it up. It stared up at me with its black-painted eyes and tiny smile, and I had to resist throwing it to the ground and grinding it under my foot. I examined at it a little more closely. The room I had found it in was the classroom that had belonged to Yoshikazu Yanagihori while he was a teacher at the school - or so said the class register book I found moth-eaten on the teacher's podium. According to the newspaper articles, he was the one who had killed the children, found with bloodied scissors in hand and guilty all over. From what the doll had said a minute ago, did that mean it had belonged to him?

"I am so sorry," the doll said, with mechanical insincerity.

"If you're sorry, then get me out of here," I spat at it.

"So very sorry," it repeated.

Wait. It was sorry...for killing the children?

The ghosts were vengeful spirits, weren't they? Didn't you get rid of ghosts by appeasing them?

"Um, the teacher...Yanagihori, he was sorry for what he did? Is that what you're saying?" It felt insane, talking to an object, but at this point looking crazy was the least of my problems.

"I did not want them to die - I was scared too," it said. "I am actually a good person."

I wasn't quite prepared to fully believe the thing, but it was at least a start. What was I supposed to do with it, anyways? I didn't trust the doll to save me from the soulless clutches of the ghost children should I encounter them face-to-face. I needed more information, or just...something.

The doll was crying again. I fought the nausea building in my stomach as I edged back towards the door. Being alone in this classroom, with this creepy doll...I wanted even more than before to find my friends again just so I wouldn't have to deal with this all by myself.

The instant I stepped into the hallway, the sobbing stopped. A strange whirring noise came from inside the doll, as if there were a tape rewinding inside of it. Then it spoke.

"From the place where I was found," intoned the doll, in its sing-song staccato, "nine paces... rabbit - sixteen paces...rat - six paces...horse - four paces...rooster."

...What?

Rabbit, rat, horse, rooster? Now that I thought about it, there was a book in one of the classrooms...something about affixing the signs of the Zodiac to the hours of a clock, to make a compass. Rabbit, east; rat, north; horse, south; rooster, west.

So. I had found the doll in the podium. Nine paces east. That put me in the hallway. Sixteen north, towards the stairwell...

It was hard to concentrate on counting my steps in the gloomy darkness of the halls. I felt ridiculously exposed, being unable to focus all of my senses on not getting ambushed in the gloom, and it seemed to take much longer than it should have to reach the specified spot - the landing on the stairwell. I looked down. A floorboard was raised slightly, creating an opening that looked as if it were just wide enough for me to pry open with my fingers, but was narrow enough that there was no way I would have noticed if I hadn't known about it. There was, in fact, someone lying nearby who probably would have been able to spot it, but they were not in any condition to be seeing anything anymore.

I shuddered, suddenly dreading what I might find under those boards, but steeled myself and slowly reached down...

Inside of the pitch-black hole, my fingers touched something soft and rough. I flinched, but hesitantly reached back when nothing bad happened. When I drew it out, I realized that it was a cloth bag, crusted over with blood. There was something inside.

I didn't want to know what it was. I really, truly didn't. But all the same, I had to know. It was-

something small and shrivelled and disturbingly squishy -

A human tongue. A wave of nausea struck, and the pitiful contents of my stomach forced their way up my throat, into the hole. Of course, I thought numbly, three little children with their tongues cut out...

The worst part was that somebody had stuck a pin through it with a neat little label, as if it were a name tag pinned to a jacket: Tokiko Tsuji, it read. It was the name of one of the two dead girls, I remembered. Stabbed in the head until it came off. I had seen her drifting at the end of a hallway earlier, the outline of her head so much fainter than the rest of her spirit body.

Tokiko Tsuji's tongue. It seemed significant. Maybe...I should give it back?

It was a dangerous thought. I had no illusions about my fate if returning the missing appendage failed to curb the spirit's murderous tendencies. But also, it seemed unfair. When I first got here, reading the articles about the "Heavenly Host incident", I had been so sickened that someone could do that to a child. I ran my tongue over my teeth, suddenly acutely aware of how it felt in my mouth. I imagined steel scissors being thrust inside and-

Yes, I would return it.

"Where..." I panted at the doll, still fighting the sick feeling churning in my stomach, "where do I find her?"

The doll was silent, lying limply in my grip, mocking me with its painted smile. Again, I resisted the urge to throw it away, instead tucking it away into a pocket. I took a deep breath, and stood up. I would search for my friends. If the doll could lead me to find a way out, I wasn't about to leave them behind, and besides, I could keep an eye out for Tokiko's ghost while I was looking for them.

I searched the entire building, but saw not a single soul of any kind, dead or living. I thought I saw a flash of red shoot around a corner once, but other than that, nothing. Eventually, I wound up back in the classroom I had started off in, frustrated, anxious, and feeling the onset of panic. I took out the doll and glared at it.

"Say something!" I demanded. It was silent. I could have cried, and might have, if an earthquake hadn't struck just then. It was a big one. The doll fell to the floor as I pitched forward, scrambling for cover under a desk as the floor groaned and the ceiling cracked, dropping debris everywhere. After an agonizing couple of minutes, the shaking stopped. I picked myself and the doll up and cautiously poked my head out into the hallway. As I thought, the school had changed. The entire hallway to the left was destroyed, leaving only the path to downstairs, which I took.

The first thing I noticed was a new door to the left of the bottom of the stairs. It was incredibly disquieting to find a door where there had only been wall before, but nevertheless I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

It was dark. I hovered nervously near the door as my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and gradually came to see that I was in a locker room. There was a faint dripping noise coming from one of the rusted shower heads, and the floor was covered in a patchwork of mold and algae. At the far end of the room there was a door labelled "POOL", but it was locked. I tried all the showers (none worked) and searched all the lockers (all empty), but didn't turn anything up.

I went back into the hall, deciding to check if anything else had changed. Maybe, if I had switched spaces, then I could find my friends...

I walked down the first-floor hallway, which strangely seemed much longer than before. As I came to the end I realized that it was because it _was _longer: there was another door that I had never seen before affixed to the wall. Much to my surprise, this one led outside, to a covered walkway. I stared in surprise at what lay on the other side - there was a whole other building here! A whole other building for Mai and Sunoko to have disappeared to, for answers to be hidden in. But also a whole other building to hide new traps and dangers. I hovered in the walkway for a few minutes, watching the rain fall, breathing in the open air (but was it really "open"? Where was this place?), and gathering up my nerve.

As soon as I entered the second building, I felt in my gut that there was something very, very wrong with the place. The air was oppressive, the silence too thick, like fog. But I had already promised myself that I wouldn't leave until I found what I was looking for. "What I was looking for" covered a large range of things, from people, to answers, to objects, but I would be damned if I missed anything that would help me to escape. Literally.

I took the corridor to my left, avoiding the broad hallway of the opposite side. There was a bookshelf tucked into the corner before the door which I examined for any useful information. There weren't any books - in fact, the top two shelves were covered entirely in dead insects, legs bent and curled, exoskeletons shining with a horrible dullness - but I found an old key near the bottom. I tucked it away in my pocket for safekeeping, and continued on my way. I entered into the east hall, carefully edging my way around corners, all senses on alert for any sign of danger.

A sudden noise made me pause. It had been very faint, but didn't I just hear...?

_Thok._

My blood ran cold. What was it? It sounded like it came from further down-

_Thok._

I crept down the hallway as silently as possible, but my heart was beating so loudly that I was terrified it would give me away.

_Thok._

It was definitely getting closer; a sickening sound, of something organic meeting something distinctly _not._ A methodical sound. A dreadful sound.

_Thok._

I turned the corner. The first thing I saw was the spirit of Tokiko Tsuji. I froze in shock for a moment- she hadn't seen me yet - but was about to call her name, to finally return what she had lost long ago, when I noticed what she was doing.

_Thok._

It was hard to tell, what with her head mostly missing, but she seemed to be looking down at something. She had a hold of the handle to a door, and was opening and slamming it shut repeatedly on that something.

It was Sunoko's head.

_Thok._

Her body lay sprawled on the floor nearby, dead. So very dead, with her fingers limp and legs tangled ungracefully under her. Sunoko, who was always smiling.

_Thok._

And still, and _still_ the door went open and shut, open and shut on Sunoko's mangled head, as the headless child spirit looked down on her and repeated the motion again and again.

_Thok. _

_Thok. _

_Thok._

In that moment, I had never be so sickened or so full of loathing in my all life - the moment that I realized that I could never return Tokiko Tsuji's tongue to her. I saw the pathetic remains of Sunoko's head, crushed in and messily leaking blood, bone, and stringy chunks of brain tissue all over the floor, and decided that I didn't care if I died, but I would never, ever forgive Tokiko Tsuji.

A sob tore itself from my throat, and the ghostly child looked up. I felt the disconcerting sensation of being stared at by eyes that weren't really there as I glared into the half-missing face of my friend's murderer. Had she killed Mai too? The little bitch. Any remains of compassion I had felt for the headless girl had evaporated instantly, leaving behind a cold, burning hatred.

Tokiko Tsuji lifted the hand that had rested on the door handle to point at me. "Gllhhh?" She gurgled, the muscles in her throat fluttering visibly behind her remaining row of teeth and tongue-stump as she tried to speak. I was suddenly, viciously glad of how hideous she looked.

"Tokiko Tsuji, I found your tongue," I declared, trying to keep my voice from shaking. Tears slid down my face, but I forced myself not to give into despair and focus on anger instead.

"Glh?" The ghost gurgled, throat muscles contracting sharply. She moved slightly towards me, her attention caught.

"I'm not giving it back," I spat.

The spirit made a pathetic pleading noise, reaching out with both hands like a child being taunted by a game of keep-away. But this was no child. It was a monster.

So I ran. I dashed back the way I had come, glancing behind me only once to see the ghostly girl in hot pursuit. I ran even faster, into the entrance way and out the door, across the walkway to the first building. My blood was pounding in my ears so hard I couldn't even think, just ran straight ahead. Near the end of the hall I saw a flash of red out of the corner of my eye again, but as I wrestled open a door and slammed it behind me, I didn't pause to see what it was.

When I had gathered my wits, I realized from the steady dripping sound that I was in the locker room. Damn it, damn it, damn it, a dead end! I couldn't get caught here; I needed to hide the bag with the tongue in it - I couldn't let her get it. I looked around wildly for a hiding spot, but there was nowhere that wasn't glaringly obvious. My eyes settled on the door to the pool. Maybe out there...no, wait, it was locked. But hadn't I found a key? It was almost too much to ask for it to be the right one. I felt in my pocket for the rusted key, and, holding my breath, slid it into the lock. It turned. The door swung open. I was hardly able to believe my luck (luck? No, there was nothing _lucky_ about anything in this place) as I stepped through.

It led to outside, in the pouring rain. The poolside was fenced in, an island of concrete and chipped tile adrift in a of a sea of trees. The water of the pool was filthy. It was so cloudy that it was impossible to tell how deep it actually was, and the idea of finding out exactly what was down there made me shudder in disgust.I thought about throwing the tongue in, but decided against it. Would it even sink? I had no idea whether or not tongues floated, and I really didn't want to find out. Besides, if it _did _float, then I would have to go retrieve it...

No way. Not that I could swim, anyways.

I looked around again. Around the other side of the pool there was a door that read "PIPE ROOM", but it was locked and the key was nowhere to be found. With a mounting frustration brought on by the fear of Tokiko's ghost catching up to me, my eyes lit upon the big spigot sitting by the poolside. Yes! There! The inside was rusted and grown over with mold, but I reached inside and shoved the little cloth bag back as far as it would go. I stood back to admire my handiwork with a feeling of triumph that turned very soon into a sinking feeling of dread as every emotion that I had managed to suppress in my mad dash across the school suddenly came crashing over me. Sunoko was dead. _Dead_ dead. Not-coming-back dead. Mai probably was too. As for the other two, who knew? They might not even be in the same space as me. And if I left this place and ran into Tokiko's ghost, I was doomed. So now what? Warm tears began to leak from my eyes, mixing with the cold rain on my face, and I slid to my knees. I pulled the doll out of my pocket and stared at it through a haze of tears, hating its stupid, smiling face even as I pleaded with it to tell me what to do. It said nothing. I threw it to the ground and just cried, sobbing for too much time to count - until I didn't have any tears left and the rain had chilled me to the bone.

I wiped my face off, shivering. Things weren't looking any better, but I couldn't just stay here forever. I felt numb all over, cold, hungry, exhausted, and emotionally spent. Glancing over at the spigot, I felt a sudden reluctance to just leave the bag with the tongue in it hidden forever. I probably...wasn't going to make it. And then nobody would ever know. As much as I wanted to spite the ghostly children, I wanted _someone _to know what had happened, some other luckless victim to know what had taken place here. I hovered indecisively at the poolside for a moment, then decided to write a note. It seemed like a fairly common thing to do here, some morbid tradition among the people trapped here to leave a monument to their existence. A cry into the darkness. I felt as if I were somehow condemning myself even as I wrote, but I didn't care anymore. When I was finished, I tucked the paper under a broken shelf of concrete to keep it dry. As I straightened up a movement nearby caught my eye, and I turned to look.

It was a child. Not glowing faintly blue and translucent like the other three, but pale and strangely solid. There was something off-putting about her, the way she was bone-dry in her blood-red dress despite the downpour, too pale and sporting a smile that seemed wildly out of place. Something sparked in my memory. There had been _four _children back then, one of them surviving...Sachiko Shinozaki, the girl in the red dress. So those flashes of red I had seen -

Her smirk broadened when she saw the surprise in my eyes. She had picked up the fallen festival doll, and now held it up almost lazily.

"You shouldn't take other people's things," she chided me patronizingly, "they might not like it very much." She glanced over at the pipe where I had hidden the tongue and giggled to herself as if at some private joke. There was something very, very wrong with how she acted; she couldn't have been more than seven years old, but her childish demeanour seemed more like an elaborate act than anything. I took a step back, and she pouted at me. "Oh, are you leaving so soon? Don't go, big sis...can I call you that?" She giggled again. "You look like you have a stupid name, just like your stuuuupid friends."

I was beginning to feel seriously afraid. "S-Sachiko Shinozaki?" I managed weakly.

She tilted her head to the side in mock surprise. "Oh, you know my name? That's too bad." Her eyes narrowed. "I'm still going to kill you."

I stumbled back towards the stairs, turning to run. She was suddenly there in front of me, mocking smile in place, hands out towards me. A powerful force enveloped me, and the ground vanished from beneath my feet. I found myself staring at the sky, uncomprehending, as gravity pulled me down -

Before the murky waters closed over my head, the last thing I saw was the smiling face of Sachiko Shinozaki, and her dress, as red as blood.

* * *

Hirune Tanaka, Aizome Junior High School

Age: 14

Cause of death: Drowned after friend was killed by child spirit.

Sunoko Tamura, Aizome Junior High School

Age: 15

Cause of death: Door closed forcefully on neck; beheaded.

Also mentioned:

Mai Kumasaki, Aizome Junior High School

Age: 14

Cause of death: Stabbed by child spirit with scissors; slowly slipped away into death.

* * *

Author's notes: I really had to do my homework to write this one. As we know, Tokiko's tongue was found by someone else before our intrepid heroes from Kisaragi Academy, but the note they left doesn't actually identify who it was. Examining all the of the candidates, I eventually decided that this girl was the most likely on the basis that A) she had at least one friend who was killed explicitly by the ghost children (going by what seems to be Tokiko's favoured killing methods, Sunoko could have been killed by her, and Mai is stated to have been taken out by what was probably Yuki), and B) the placement of her body (in the pool), and description of her "cause of death". The only thing that is kind of iffy is that she'd have to be one smart cookie for a 14-year-old, and I mean, look at Yuka...oh well. Nana seemed to have it together for someone her age, so I guess it works.

Also, I arbitrarily decided that classroom 1-A (the one you start out in) was Yoshikazu's classroom, and if you follow the the directions from the doll it should take you to the landing of the staircase where Yoshie was killed. Yay.

As for Sachiko, she has a pretty clear interest in not letting the tongues be found, so let's assume that it was her that split the doll up and chucked away the pieces. In Chapter 4 she was having a grand old time haunting Satoshi's space, so maybe that's why Ayumi and Yoshiki got away with it...

Yeah, hopefully this all adds up. Many thanks to the Corpse Party wiki for saving me from having a kajillion save files on my game.

Anyways, the little box is right down there, folks! I think this is the first time I've written a piece this long for anyone else to read...whew.


	6. Notes

_What have I done?_

Oh shit. Oh my God.

What did I do?

_What have I _done_?_

I couldn't stop staring at my hands. Just looking down, frozen at the sight of my fingers burrowed into flesh like thick, pale worms. The stickiness of lukewarm blood covering my fingers. The sensation of organs brushing against my knuckles, squishy and rubbery all at once. The ragged edges of flesh. The rawness of my fingernails, gummed up with body-gristle.

It was Akihiko's body. One of my friends from class.

Something dripped from my mouth. It felt as if my face was slathered in-

No. No. _No._

It tasted coppery and slick. There were chunks of raw meat stuck in between my teeth...

I gagged. I wanted to spill all the contents of my stomach, bile and all, onto the floor, drink a thousand litres of water and chase it with acid to purge my insides, to rip my stomach open and scrub it clean with bleach.

My hand, without my consent but to my utter horror, stirred in the half-submerged pool of Akihiko's insides. Organs were spilling out over the gap in his torso, and I found wondering in morbid fascination how they had all fit in there in the first place. My hand grasped a smooth tube of intestine and pulled, drawing it out like a piece of wet spaghetti. It was so long. Longer and longer and longer...there was so much of it. And still my hand drew it up, closer and closer to my mouth. I couldn't stop it. It went into my mouth, warm and meaty. And I bit down. Chewed. Swallowed. The taste of raw meat mingled with the tears dripping down my face, and I whimpered as I kept eating.

Why was this happening? How could it be happening?

I remembered...

The notes.

The ones that I had been warned not to read by a ghost, barely comprehensible in its anguished gibberish. And I _went out of my way_ to read them. Akihiko kept telling me not to, but I called him a wuss and did it anyways. I read the notes of a girl who ate her friend.

And then _this..._

Why didn't I listen!? What was _wrong _with me? If only I hadn't read those notes -

But I had.

I couldn't remember anything after that until just now - there was a blank spot in my memories, a dark fog in my mind. Somehow, impossibly, I became even more horrified as I imagined what could have taken place in that missing time. I must have done this, all of this. Killed him. Ripped him, tore him, messily devoured him, until my mind cleared - and _still, _even then, because my body kept going. It was as if I was looking through someone else's eyes, helpless to affect their body, but no, those hands were my own. I had a bandage across the back of my left from a fight with Kain last week. How the hell had it come to this?

I couldn't stop crying. And I couldn't stop _eating._

Slowly, to the sound of ribs cracking and muscle tearing beneath my fingers, my mind began to fade...

It actually

tasted

pretty good.

* * *

Mitsuharu Ohtaki, Misato Municipal Brotherhood High

Age: 17

Succumbed to Darkening and died in anguish.

Akihiko Kagurazaka, Misato Municipal Brotherhood High

Age: 17

Suffered severe injury to abdomen; bled out.

* * *

A/N: The other day my friend commented that she wasn't able to gross herself out with her own writing, so I decided to see if I could. I couldn't, but I don't know if that's just because I wrote it or because I'm bad at writing gruesome stuff. Oh well.

As it happens, poor Mitsuharu met his fate by insisting on reading all the Victim's Memoirs (from Chapter 2). Somewhat ironically, the Victim's Memoirs in Chapter 3 were (probably) penned by Kain Hagiwara, who seemed to have spent most of his time in Heavenly Host searching for Mitsuharu.  
Oh yeah, and Akihiko was still alive when Mitsuharu started chowing down on him. He eventually bled to death. Woohoo.

Anyways, thanks to all the lovely people who have reviewed this, you make my days! Feedback always puts me in the mood to write more :)


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